Celebrating May Day (May 1st) in the early 1900s

A pleasant memory from my childhood in the early 1900s was May Day, the 1st of May. It was regarded as the beginning of good weather and it was widely celebrated.

On May Day the maypole came out of storage. It was a pole with twenty-or-so different coloured ribbons hanging from the top, and in good weather it was erected in the playground so that passers by could stop and admire the celebrations around it. In bad weather it was erected in the school hall.

School children were the maypole dancers, although I suppose that there may have been festive maypole dancing elsewhere with adults.

Each maypole dancer held the end of a ribbon. Then they danced round, weaving in and out of one another, which made a pattern of coloured ribbons down the pole. Different dances produced different patterns, and the children had to move closer and closer to the pole the more they danced because their ribbons became shorter. When the teacher thought that the ribbons were becoming too short, the children had to dance the other way to unwind the ribbons. Sometimes this was to music.

I loved to see it, but I never took part. My brother Jim did, and my mother made him a smock for the event, as worn by the old country yokels.

To add to the festive atmosphere, the horses in the streets often had nosegays of flowers platted into their harnesses. (Also in the summertime horses would wear little straw ear covers. I suppose to keep off the flies.)

This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.